The Commander’s Chair – Pauper to Prince

It has only been a few weeks since I wrote my first article on how to upgrade the Commander precons. After several discussions I noted that there was one serious flaw with the way I was approaching both building and upgrading Commander decks. I have not been taking the price of cards into account. As a result, I have been giving advice that not everyone could follow. When @mikelinnemann suggested that I write an article covering upgrades of Commander decks at different price levels, I went to work.

Today I will be covering $5, $10, $50, $100 and higher cost upgrades to the Commander precons. By covering this I hope to not only show cheap and easy ways to improve your Commander decks, but also to show what makes up the difference between the Commander precons and Commander decks that are ready to take on all comers. For the purposes of this demonstration I will use the Counterpunch precon.

As happy as I am with these Commander decks, they do not hold their own against real Commander decks. The decks do not live up to the potential that each of the new Commanders presents. Most of the cards in the decks can be replaced with cards that work better. There are a decent number of cards in each deck that I think can be removed without remorse. When you go to upgrade a deck pull aside any cards you are never happy to see and set them aside. This is your junk pile. At any upgrade level you should have at least enough cards to replace these.

Our first goal is probably the hardest to achieve. We have at least 20 cards to replace and only $5 in which to spend. That leaves us a maximum average cost per card of only .25. Most online deck programs separate the decks into Creatures, Artifacts, Enchantments, Sorceries, Instants, Planeswalkers, and Lands. While this is a simple view of a deck, I prefer to separate decks on an individual basis. For Ghave, I would separate the cards into Tutors, Draw/Dig, Constant Sacrifice, Recursion, WOG Effects, Spot Removal, Mana Ramp, Utility and Land. To keep us under the $5 mark, I won’t consider any cards that cost more than 50 cents or require a card that cost more than 50 cents to be effective. With that in mind I found the following cards that could give the deck some improvement.

Tutors: Even at this cheap of an upgrade, we have access to some wonderful tutors. Congregation at Dawn is particularly powerful. Almost every creature in this deck has a utility purpose, so being able to tutor multiple creatures is very powerful.

Draw/Dig:Abundance is a greatly undervalued Commander card. You are never sad to see this card. It will help you avoid being either mana flooded or mana screwed and it survives all the red mass destruction spells. Fecundity is an auto-include in any deck running Ghave as the Commander, at any price. Being able to pay 2 mana to draw a card each turn is absurd, especially in a deck that doesn’t run any islands.

Constant Sacrifice: Sacrifice based removal ignores almost all protection that creatures have. Butcher of Malakir is another card I would like to see in this deck at all levels. Butcher lets you pay 2 mana a turn to force a sacrifice. Later on we will want more cards like this.

Recursion: We do not get much good recursion at this level, but Mortuary is pretty good. When you combine it with Fecundity, any creature that goes to your graveyard can be put right back into your hand.

WOG Effects: I like Phyrexian Rebirth and Life’s Finale better than Wrath of God in Commander. Having them be so cheap is just a bonus.

Spot Removal: Spot removal does not suffer at all at these levels. All three of these spells are grade A Commander removal. I always hope to get Fleshbag online with both Fecundity + Mortuary

Mana Ramp: This is another spot where cost is not a large factor when it comes to quality. I run both mana heavy and accelerant heavy in most of my Green commander decks.

Utility: Pentavus is not quite as good as Ghave, but it can work similarly with Fecundity and Butcher of Malakir to create a control engine.

The difference in cards between $5 and $10 can be pretty small. After all there isn’t much difference between a $1 rare and 50 cent rare. They are both generally considered to be junk. However, the access to a few $1-2 cards can give you the basic to one of the many infinite engines in Magic. I am a proponent of having the ability to go infinite in whatever Commander deck you decide to build. When games last hour upon hour, you will need someone who can pull the trigger and put everyone out of their misery. From the first time I saw Ghave I knew that he was going to be quick friends with many of the cards from the deck featured in The Voltron Matrix. Over time I have grown to respect Ghave as a Commander. Many people who were trying to decide between Teysa, Ghost Council of Orzov, Savra and other sacrifice based strategies have been given the perfect Commander. As we upgrade this deck, it will push further and further into a Creature Control strategy.

As you can see, most of the cards are the same. The biggest improvements we get here are in utility cards. It that Betrays lets us gain an enormous advantage from our sacrifice control cards. Juniper Order Ranger and Ashnod’s Altar together give us the possibility of having infinite tokens, infinite mana,have our creatures be infinitely large, and have infinite “enters the battlefield” and “sacrifice” triggers. With that, we have gained possibilities that were not available in the original deck. After all the changes the deck is now;

At a $50 upgrade level we finally get to start seeing what a deck should really be looking like. As you invest more and more money into a deck, less and less of the original cards make the cut. As a result, you still will not be able to include a ton of the signature commander staples into your deck at $50. You can a few $3-7 cards and that can really help the deck out. It is important to use those slots wisely. While cards like Solemn Simulacrum are good in almost every Commander deck, they take up a disproportionate amount of your budget for their power. There is no point in stacking your deck with cards that let you win faster if you do not have cards that let you win. The deck at this point will be mostly cards you add to it, rather than cards that came with it.

At this level you have to start making difficult decisions about what you are keeping and what you do not have room for. At this point, I feel confident going all in on a theme or strategy. This means cutting cards that do not directly help, or can only help in a limited fashion. By using 3-4 Gravepact effects and 5 Braids-like sacrifice effects, I feel confident that I can keep the board clear even without a WOG effect. At the same time, I know that I will need to be generating much more creatures than I was before. The $50 range finally gives us the freedom to include one or two of the cheaper packages available. In this case, it will be Melira/Juniper Order Ranger + Persist + Sac Outlet, In Addition to the Revilark + Eternal Witness package. The Eternal Witness package includes Mirror Entity and Saffi to create an infinite loop. Here is a deck I would be happy to run at a local store;

A $50 upgrade gives you a basic Commander deck. A $100 upgrade is just a $50 upgrade that you throw in a few staples. When you start running cards in your deck that everyone wants to run, $50 adds up fast. This is also when you start getting slightly better lands. Land bases for decks can add up quick, so we get less for this $50 than the last $50.

Aside from some better lands and staples, Smokestack is the big addition here. This is the kind of card you can’t afford on a $50 budget, but you keep your eye out for when trading. Smokestack and Braids along with token generation let people know you are taking winning seriously. This is the kind of build that doesn’t make a lot of friends but wins a lot of games.

Endgame

$100 is not an expensive Commander deck. In reality it is far from it. Even before getting into foil, foreign, misprinted and altered cards, most Commander Decks are worth hundreds of US dollars. It is not uncommon for a Commander deck to be worth as much as a legacy deck. Getting a deck that is that valuable can take months of buying and trading to get each and every card you are looking for. On the upside, commander decks that are planned out and properly built wreak havoc on decks that are thrown together. When you stop taking cost into account and just build the best deck you can, the deck can look pretty outrageous.

When you upgrade without a budget, you are not looking for cards to put in as much as you are looking for which cards you might want to keep. You are not upgrading as much as you are rebuilding. For me, I was only truly attached to 10 non-land cards from the Counterpunch precon. If I were to upgrade Ghave with any card I wanted, it would look something like this;

I would like to thank @mikelinnemann. If you are not following him on twitter you should go ahead and start. If anyone would like to read about a specific Commander topic I would be more than happy to accommodate you. You can email me for deck advice or any comments you would prefer not to post on the page – seanpatch@hotmail.com. I have heard rumors of a new Commander author who will be joining me here on Red Site Wins. I hope everyone gives him, or her, a great welcome. Take some time to look around the site. We have had a lot of new authors join up and now have a little something for everyone. This took way to much time to write, so I need to go play some Commander to unwind.

Yeah sure – post it on the site. One note – there are some really obvious treefolk that I’m still trying to acquire (Dauntless Doerbark, Timber Protector, Treefolk Harbringer) so skip those when you review my deck.

great guide! im using the 50 dollar range specifically to ramp up my ghave. I do have a suggestion though for your lists: sadistic glee and blade of the blood chief. both will trigger with lose of creatures, granting +1/+1′ tokens that you can transform into a instant army.